Pokémon from a Dream

Posted April 07, 2024

As I’ve dug through the history of Pokémon games in my last minute quest to bring as many unique Pokémon forward to Home as possible, I’ve found so many esoteric and touching reminders of the past. Today, I’m gonna talk briefly about Pokémon dreams.

The Pokémon Dream World was a companion website to the Generation 5 (Black, White, Black 2, & White 2) Pokémon games. It let you tuck a Pokémon in to sleep and and journey to the Dream World, where you could catch other rare Pokémon, plant berries (the only way to grow them in Generation 5), and connect to other players.

The Pokémon you catch in the Dream World can be sent back to the Generation 5 games, where they arrive in an area called Entree Forest. And when you catch them in Entree Forest in Black, White, Black 2, or White 2 you can use the rare Dream Ball to catch them.

Dreamy

The Dream Ball does, of course, remain in future games. So if you have a Pokémon caught in a Dream Ball, that is preserved as you bring them forward. (The Dream Ball also became a much more typical Pokéball from Generation 8 (Sword & Shield) onwards.)

Experience wise, think Neopets. You’d connect your copy of the game to your Pokemon.com account, send a Pokémon over, and then you could access the Dream World through the website. Little minigames and other small things like that.

Pokémon Dream World closed on January 14th, 2014. That’s more than 10 years ago, at the time of writing. So imagine my surprise when I checked the Entree Forest in my copy of Pokémon White:

They have waited for so long

And found a bunch of Pokémon in Entree Forest that I had apparently caught and downloaded from the Dream World, back when it was operational. Those Pokémon have waited for 10+ years in that forest clearing. And you can bet I caught them.

100% catch rate from Dream Balls helps a lot

Pokémon captured from the Dream World in 2024. I’m continually amazed at the small but unlikely scenarios I keep finding myself in when playing Pokémon.